


The smoke mirror

by Tofu_is_amazing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Samcest, Shotgunning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:55:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tofu_is_amazing/pseuds/Tofu_is_amazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam and Dean hunt a witch, they don't expect her to be able to cast a spell before she dies. Everything seems fine though, no weird extra body part, no sudden urge to behave like a chicken, no thing. It's not until they go back to their motel and meet somebody strangely familiar that they realize that... yeah, things are not so fine afterall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The smoke mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [innerglow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerglow/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for Karri, I hope you will like it <3  
> Many many many thanks to the wonderful Nina (wincestimyclarity on tumblr), who has been kind enough to beta this story and provided me with helpful pieces of advice. I love you <3

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. At all. It was a simple case, and even if it involved a witch, it was a case Sam and Dean had solved in one short day. They had stumbled into Devon, Iowa after reading in a local paper that three young women had had their throats sliced and had been drained of their blood. Three women, who had nothing in common but their youth and a generally acknowledged beauty. A few talks with family members, a trip to the library, two burgers and three beers later, Sam and Dean had been in the living room of Zazie Belgor, a seventy three year old retired hairdresser with a tendency to witchcraft and a strong desire to stay young forever. Jars full of blood were aligned on a small altar where the fireplace should have been, and Zazie had been applying blood to her skin like moisturizing cream. Just another day at work.

It had been easy. She was unprepared, didn’t seem to really know what was happening, and, again, she was seventy three. It had taken a bowl of – this time – fresh chicken feet, a few words of Latin, and Zazie had fallen on the ground to never get up again. It should have happened like that. She shouldn’t have been able to cast a spell after Dean had thrown the match in the bowl. She was supposed to combust, or explode, or what the fuck ever, but she was not supposed to turn back, with her mouth set in a thin grimacing line. She was not supposed to turn toward Sam, she was not supposed to mutter an unintelligible curse, and she was absolutely not supposed to point her finger at him.

But she did. And while Zazie finally crumbled to the ground like red sand, Sam and Dean stood frozen into place, eyes locked on each other, waiting for the inevitable catastrophe to happen. They waited in the empty living room, until Dean broke the silence. “Uh… You feel ok?”

Sam looked down at himself, checking the sensations in his legs and arms, palming his stomach and his face, looking for anything that could betray a curse casted on him. But everything was in place, and Sam didn’t feel any different. No shivers, no queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, no incoming headache, no crazy thoughts, no nothing. He furrowed his brow and shook his head, leaving the room in silence again. Dean shrugged. “Well, first round’s on me then”.

They went to the bar and treated themselves with good and greasy food, Sam favoring fries instead of the tradition salad, which earned him raised eyebrows and a “look who’s finally becoming a man”. They  hustled pool long enough to make a few hundred bucks and leave before they could get too many eyebrows raised in their direction. Dean drove them back to the motel, and that’s when things went downhill.

The  _Melody Motel_ was right alongside the road, and was one of the most decent places they’d stayed in quite a while. When Sam shuffled the door open and switched on the light, the first thing that came to his mind was “Shit, I drank too much”. Then Dean went past Sam, gasped, drew his gun in a half a second and snarled “what the fuck are you?”, and Sam thought “I didn’t drink enough”.

The creature sitting on his bed looked as stunned as they both were, staring at Sam like he was the devil himself, a mix of disbelief and horror on his face. It stopped staring only to cast glances at Dean, and whatever it was seeing didn’t really please it because it was growing more and more agitated, its face paling with each second, and its chest heaving more and more. It took Sam a handful of seconds to recognize the signs of a panic attack and this was just… wrong, coming from the thing that had crept into their motel room. Dean seemed to come to the same conclusion, because without drawing his gun back, he lowered it, and furrowed his brow.

"Sam, knife.", he asked with his hand stretched toward Sam, his eyes never leaving the creature. Sam pulled his small silver knife from its case on his belt, and handed it over. Dean took careful steps forward, while the creature stopped watching Sam to focus on the blade that was coming dangerously close to him.

"Wh-what are you doing with that?", it asked, trembles in its voice.

Dean inched closer, each step carefully measured, until he stood in front of the top of the bed, where the creature had crawled back until it was trapped against the wall.

"Gotta test something." Dean muttered, before he grabbed the creature’s arm and trailed the knife on the skin, where blood soon started to roll. The creature yelled and tried to wrench its arm from Dean’s grasp, but it didn’t seem to react to the silver blade other than that. Dean dropped its arm, and with eyes as big as saucers, raised his head to look at Sam.

"What the fuck?"

~

He was tall, had a thin waist and a back where muscles started to develop but not enough to make his shirt stretch on his skin. He looked like a young man, probably around twenty, with baggy pants and a non descriptive black tee shirt. His face still held faint traces of his teenage years, smooth cheeks and almost no stubble on his jaw. Strands of brown hair kept falling on his forehead, just above hazel eyes slanted like a fox’s. Thin lips were still slightly parted in a stunned expression. Sam watched the young man, feeling dizzy all of a sudden, and not because of the few beers he had had at the bar not an hour before. He kept blinking, and kept seeing the young man when he opened his eyes. This didn’t make sense, and yet here it was, in all its glory. Sam stared at the body in front of his, at its height and its appearance, the length of the hair and the color of the skin. He watched the stunned look on the man’s face, one that held surprise, fear, but also a hint of defiance. Sam was looking at a young man, scared but already calculating, caught off guard but planning his escape. A boy with a strong sense of survival, a boy who had learned to never let his guard down.

Sam blinked once more, but the man was still there.  _Sam_  was still there. No need to fight the truth, there was no mistaking it, and from the way he looked, _Sam_ was most likely nineteen.

Sam sighed. "Well, maybe that witch really did something." Dean snorted, the sound slightly hysterical. "You think?".

~

It took two bottles of tequila for the whole mess to start making sense. Sam by then is on his way to trashed, and his younger self seems to finally relax and accept the clusterfuck that is this situation. Dean looks mostly okay, although he keeps glancing back and forth between the two versions of his brother, each time seeming more confused.

"It’s like playing that game", he slurs, "you know, where you gotta spot the differences between two versions of the same picture".

Stanford!Sam, as Sam has started to call him in his head three shots ago, looks at Dean like he’s a moron, and Sam chuckles because, yeah, some things are normal, at least. They’re all sitting on the floor, Dean with his back to his bed, Sam next to him against his own bed, and time traveling Sam in front of them, on the pillow he snatched from Dean’s bed. So far, they only exchanged stilled words between them, at a loss to explain this situation, except with the curse Zazie sent Sam’s way. But even that is debatable, because as curses go, except for giving Sam a headache because he’s having a conversation with a younger version of himself, this one isn’t really life altering. So all in all, they don’t have a clue of what happened and more importantly how to reverse it and send Sam back to his time. This is why tequila is such a good idea right now.

Dean starts dozing off, his head reclining on the bed, and Sam will try to remember to give him shit in the morning, in retaliation of all the times Dean teased Sam for being a lightweight. He also knows that Dean is gonna bitch about how sore his neck will be, and he’s half tempted to nudge Dean’s leg with his foot to make him move to the bed, but Sam’s legs don’t seem really interested in the idea, so he gives up. Dean slept in worse positions, he’ll survive.

In front of him, Stanford!Sam is playing with a hole in the fabric of his pants, his brow furrowed and teeth gnawing at his lower lip. Sam knows the look, has seen himself doing it his whole life. It’s strange to watch it as an outsider, to see the small crease between his furrowed brows, and how it makes him look older than he really is.

"What’s the matter?", he asks, if only to clear the troubled expression from his other self’s face.  _Jesus this is fucked up._  Sam raises his head from his lap and stares at his grow-up self, then at Dean now clearly asleep, and then at the motel room.

"Why are you here?", he asks, and Sam knows, just knows he’s not talking about the  _Melody Motel_ 's room, that he's not even talking about this town or the whole goddamn state. This isn't about the curse, or the tequila. He's talking about this, Dean, the salted door and windows, the duffel bags with a few change of clothes in them, and the guns on the nightstand. Hunting. Sam sighs.

There is no way this conversation is gonna end well, and even if he is drunk, he has no guarantee that if Sam goes back to his time, he won’t remember all of this. He has to be careful with his words, because he might be influencing his own destiny by telling the truth to his nineteen year old self, and isn’t that just… messed up.

"Things happened", he ends up shrugging, lifting the half empty bottle of tequila to his lips, just so he looks busy and doesn’t have to justify his piss poor explanation. He swallows the alcohol and it burns his throat, heat pooling in his stomach. He wishes he could pass out already, because he knows himself, and he  _knows_ that “things happened” isn’t gonna cut it. Of all the things Dean says about him, “stubborn pain in the ass” might be the most accurate. And sure enough, a whisper breaks the silence of the room. “Where’s Jess?”. Congratulations, you just won one million dollars.

Sam swallows again at that, this time hoping he’ll drown himself in tequila and will never wake up. He looks at the ceiling, and wonders how his brain matter would look plastered all over it. Two months after he was back on the road with Dean, they worked a case where a ghost went vengeful on newly married couples. The man who had died and turned vengeful hadn’t been dead for long, and when Sam and Dean dug up his corpse, salted it and threw gasoline on it, it still had flesh on his bones inside the coffin. Dean had thrown a lit up match inside the grave, and soon after, the smell of burning flesh rose in the air. Sam threw up and stayed a whole hour in the shower that night. This is what he thinks about when he thinks about Jess. He can't remember how happy they were, can't recall the smell of her skin and the sound of her laughter. He can't remember anything but her body pinned the ceiling, licked by the flames and her wide open eyes begging for help. All he can remember is the smell of burning flesh.  

He can’t talk about Jess. Couldn’t when it happened, can’t now. He certainly can’t when he’s drunk, and when he’s talking with a version of himself who is still dating her. Bile rises in his throat, and tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. He is gonna cry if he keeps seeing golden locks behind his closed eyelids. Breathing hard, he gives the bottle to the other Sam, who is studying him from his place on the floor, and Sam knows they’re screwed. He’s not stupid, he knows what he looks like, and he knows that Stanford!Sam is gonna read more into his silence than he could have in a carefully prepared speech. Sam can’t speak, but he can’t lie either. Not about this. Maybe this is why Stanford!Sam’s hand trembles slightly when he takes the bottle Sam is handing him.

Swallow, rinse, repeat.

~

An hour later and they are truly done. They talked about hunting, about everything that happened so far in Sam’s life. He left out some parts, like Madison, like Cold Oak and hellhounds. He figures his younger self doesn’t need to know what’s ahead of him, on top of losing the girl he currently dates and loves. Sam remembers Stanford as one of the best times of his life, and definitely the longest. He has memories of games with Dean that make him smile, of soccer tournaments he won, of his dad’s proud smile, but Stanford? Stanford is four years of normalcy, of boring classes and empty pockets. Of crappy apartments to go to every night, and of a routine so tragically simple it makes his heart twist in his chest. Stanford was amazing. And of course, a big part of that happiness was  _Her_. He can’t take that away from Stanford!Sam, can’t tell him everything will go up in flames, that he’s gonna lose everything and then find a semblance of it back on the road with his brother. He can’t say that eventually he will be fine, despite the pain, despite the loss, despite the hurt. He can’t tell his nineteen year old self that, because he wouldn’t understand. And it’s fine.

The room is spinning and they’re sprawled on the floor, feet now touching. Stanford!Sam is smiling, a sure sign that he is truly trashed as well, and Sam feels relief for the first time since Zazie pointed her bony finger at him. Maybe the night won’t end too badly. The smile leaves Sam’s face in favor of a frown though, and he sighs. “Man, I wish I had weed.”

And Sam has to agree with him. He remembers the first joint he smoked in college, something Brady had handed over to him without ceremony, and it had been a revelation. Sam has never been a big smoker, but weed made him feel lighter, made him forget about all the things that kept drowning him. It was a small break in a life of anxiety, stress, and sadness. He remembers smoking on a regular basis while at Stanford, getting weed from Brady and sharing joint after joint with Jess on their couch. It makes him smile. Nowadays, he practically doesn’t smoke anymore. He still keeps some weed in his bag, and on occasions, he and Dean share a joint. They don’t make a habit of it, but it happens.

Sam gets up from his spot on the floor and tries to steady himself before he walks to his duffel bag. He rummages through it, and eventually finds what he’s looking for. When he turns back and throws his smoking paper and small plastic bag full of light green clusters to Stanford!Sam, the kid’s face lights up. “Nice”, he approves. Sam goes back to sit against the foot of his bed and watches himself rolling a joint, takes in how easily Stanford!Sam rolls it, and remembers being high more often than not when he was nineteen. He checks his pockets to find a lighter but comes up empty and Stanford!Sam crawls on the floor to look through Dean’s. They both know Dean’s zippo is there, don’t have to talk about it or anything. It’s as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, and it’s a small comfort in face of the enormity of this situation.

When he finds the lighter, Stanford!Sam doesn’t go back to his spot on the floor and instead comes to sit next to Sam, a blissful sigh leaving his lips when he reclines his back against the foot of the bed. They sit side by side, Sam’s left flank pressed against Stanford!Sam's right, the touch unfamiliar and yet soothing at the same time. Stanford!Sam lights up the joint and takes a long drag before he closes his lips and breathes deeply, holding the smoke inside for a few seconds before he exhales. The smoke leaves his lips slowly and twirls in the air before it dissipates in the room. He reclines his head back on the bed, eyes closed and a small smile on his lips. Sam’s fingers itch for a drag and he plucks the joint from his younger self’s fingers, bringing it to his own lips and inhaling deeply. He barely restrains from moaning when the smoke fills his lungs and he remembers just how fucking good it feels. Next to him, Sam has turned his head and his looking at him through already half lidded eyes, a small smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. They pass the joint and zippo back and forth between the two of them, filling the room with smoke, until there is barely anything left to smoke and they’re well and truly high.

Sam feels lighter, enjoys the buzz and how fuzzy everything is. This is why he loves weed. Stanford!Sam plucks the joint from his fingers, their hands brushing casually, and he brings it to his lips, while Sam watches the little red glow coming closer to Sam’s fingers as he inhales. It’s almost done now, maybe a drag or two left.

Perhaps it’s the only advantage of this whole mess, but they don’t have to talk to know what the other is thinking about. It feels natural, like a logical conclusion, something that was bound to happen. Sam sees Stanford!Sam pursing his lips to hold the smoke inside, and they both shuffle closer to each other, getting as close at the can without one climbing in the other’s lap. Stanford!Sam doesn’t hesitate before he brings his mouth close to Sam’s. Their noses brush against each other, and it’s like looking in a distorted mirror. They’ve both done it a thousand times, at first with strangers during parties, then with a few hook ups, and then almost exclusively with Jess. It’s something they always associate with smoking.

Even when he smokes with Dean, Sam can’t help but wonder how it would feel like, to try  _that_ with his big brother. He’s sure Dean’s done it before too, and maybe one day they’ll try, just for the sake of it. Sam thinks maybe they didn’t so far because of the heavy implications. It’s an almost nonexistent touch, and yet it would be crossing a new limit in intimacy that even they haven’t so far. And that says a lot. But he thinks about it sometimes, trying shotgunning with his brother. He imagines bringing his lips close to Dean’s parted ones, imagine how Dean’s eyes would be blown away, just a thin circle of green around a huge pit of black. He imagines how he would be so close he could brush Dean’s freckles with his nose, how he could smell Dean’s breath against his mouth, and how he could fit his hand against Dean’s jaw to hold him right there and just blow the smoke in his brother’s mouth. He can almost feel Dean’s stubble against his palm, the short hair at the back of his neck and his plush lips just right there in front of him. He pictures Dean hovering over him, covering his body with his own and looking at Sam like the sun just rose on his face. He imagines their bodies tangled together, sweaty palms gripping everywhere, skin on skin everywhere but their mouths, only linked by the smoke they would trade from one set of lungs to another.

Yeah, maybe that’s why they haven’t done that yet.

Stanford!Sam brings him back to the present time by thumbing Sam’s mouth open with just a little pressure against his bottom lip, before he leans forward slowly, eyes never leaving Sam’s, and just blows slowly. Sam’s heart is hammering in his chest, and he’s sure Stanford!Sam can feel his pulse under his thumb where it settled against Sam’s neck. The smoke is released against his parted mouth and goes from Sam’s lungs to his, and he inhales for what feels like forever when it must take in reality only a few seconds. Stanford!Sam releases his hold on Sam’s jaw when he is done but leaves his hand there, just touching, and Sam feels smoke in his lungs. It’s hot, makes his blood rush south and his lips tingle. It’s better than anything else, and almost better than sex. He holds the smoke there for a few seconds, enjoying how full his lungs feel and the heat in his throat, before he lets it go. He missed this. Stanford!Sam doesn’t let go of his face, just keep holding him, his body turned toward Sam and he doesn’t seem like he’s gonna move anytime soon.

Sam doesn’t realize his eyes were closed before he opens them again and finds his nineteen year old self gazing at him with lust in his eyes.  _What the fuck are you doing Sam?_ Stanford!Sam raises his eyebrows as he holds the joint up in front of Sam, and it’s a dare, they both know it. It’s not about just smoking. It goes beyond that. It’s about where their skins are touching, about the heat that makes Sam’s shirt cling to his skin. It’s about the sweat pooling in the hollow of Stanford!Sam’s throat. It’s desire and lust. It’s sinking his teeth in the other’s shoulders, biting his name beneath the skin, until  _please_  is the only taste left on their tongues. It’s not about shotgunning, it’s about melting like a snowflake on the inside of a thigh, while being burned by scalding fingers trying to hold hips. It’s about being swallowed whole. It’s physical. Sam shouldn’t, this is probably the worst idea ever, because arousal rushes through his body at the prospect of shotgunning, and it’s so wrong considering he’s hanging out with himself, but right now, thanks to tequila and an anonymous dealer he and Dean met two weeks ago in Montana, Sam doesn’t give a crap.

He nods at Stanford!Sam, who smirks, the little shit, and puts the joint to his lips before he lights the end of it with Dean’s zippo. He inhales deeply, finishing the joint once and for all, and feels the smoke scratching his lungs as he holds his breath. He turns his head to look at Sam, and feels all the places where their bodies touch: his whole left side pressed against Sam’s right, heat coming off in waves from the both of them, shoulders bumping, thighs pressed close, and when Sam twists his body to get closer, Sam’s hair tickles his neck. Stanford!Sam is gazing at him with blown out pupils and his mouth is already open when Sam cups his face and tilts it back. He exhales, and Sam inhales. Their lips are almost touching, and it would only take an inch closer for them to meet. This is it.

Stanford!Sam must be following his train of thoughts because he inches closer and finishes inhaling right against Sam’s lips. It’s a slow and sloppy kiss. They’re both too high to get it right right away, and it’s more lips bumping against each other than a real proper kiss, but it’s mind blowing. Sam doesn’t stop to think about how fucked up this is, he just keeps kissing Sam slowly, tasting weed on his younger self’s lips, and memorizing the shape of his own lips. He strokes his thumb back and forth on Sam’s cheek, feels the small bump next to his nose where his mole is, and thinks “so this is what it feels like”.

Stanford!Sam moves back a little and chuckles, the smoke he was still holding inside his lungs coming out in short puffs that hit Sam’s mouth, and he closes the gap between them again, this time teasing Sam’s lips with his tongue, until Sam opens his mouth and they move their tongues clumsily against each other. They like the same things, know the best rhythm, and if they were sober it would probably be a disaster of a kiss, but right now they’re drunk and high, and their tongues dancing together feel pretty fucking perfect. Stanford!Sam climbs in Sam’s lap and Sam circles his arms around his younger self’s waist. They moan, forgetting how they ended up like this, just kissing until they’re out of breath. They make out for only a minute before Sam draws back and rest his forehead against Sam’s. For a second, the only sound in the room comes from their heavy panting and Dean’s light snoring.

"We…", starts Sam.

"Are high", Stanford!Sam finishes for him.

"Yeah", Sam snorts, his arms still holding Sam close to him. He looks at him, takes in his disheveled hair and the flush on his cheeks, and they both know they could take this further if they wanted to. Instead, Stanford!Sam climbs off of Sam’s lap, and unsteadily stands up. "I’m gonna take a leak", he mutters before turning back and heading to the bathroom. Sam nods and stands up as well, ignoring how the room keeps spinning and sitting on his bed. "I’ll sleep in the armchair, take the bed", he says to Sam’s retreating back. Stanford!Sam turns around and shakes his head, smiling softly. "Dude, I’m you, stop the chivalrous act.". They smile awkwardly at each other before Sam nods, and lies down on his bed. "Night, Sam", he mumbles. "Goodnight, Sam", Stanford!Sam answers.

When he comes out of the bathroom, Sam is already fast asleep. Sam gazes at the man he’s bound to become, looks at the lines on his face that he himself doesn’t sport yet. There are dark circles under his eyes and a little crease between his brows as if he were frowning permanently. Tomorrow will be soon enough to think about how to return to his own time. Right now, he can only go back to his chair, picking up the pillow on the ground on his way there. He sits in the chair and puts the pillow behind his head. He watches Dean where he’s snoring on the floor, and smiles softly.  _Well, whatever happens, at least I will always have you._


End file.
